You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Daily (Mon-Sun)
Daily Digest
Sign up for global news and reviews, a Wallpaper* take on architecture, design, art & culture, fashion & beauty, travel, tech, watches & jewellery and more.
Monthly, coming soon
The Rundown
A design-minded take on the world of style from Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, from global runway shows to insider news and emerging trends.
Monthly, coming soon
The Design File
A closer look at the people and places shaping design, from inspiring interiors to exceptional products, in an expert edit by Wallpaper* global design director Hugo Macdonald.
When Rachel Scott was appointed creative director of Proenza Schouler last year, taking the reins from founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, she decided that her first task was to get to know who the New York brand’s ‘woman’ was.
So she sat down with them. ‘I spent a lot of time meeting with our customers, actually meeting with the Proenza Schouler woman, and trying to understand who she was,’ the Jamaica-born designer said after her debut runway show for the brand, which doubled as the opening act of New York Fashion Week yesterday afternoon (11 February 2026). ‘I wanted to know how I could bring her something new for her life.’
Rachel Scott makes her runway debut at Proenza Schouler
An amalgam of McCollough and Hernandez’s mothers’ maiden names, the label was founded after the partners in life and work graduated from Manhattan’s Parsons School of Design in 2002 (read our 2023 interview for more). Since, it has become a byword for contemporary New York style, encapsulating a ‘downtown cool’ and favoured by intellectual urbanites (Proenza Schouler has long been a favourite in art world circles). Notable fans include Dree Hemingway, Chloë Sevigny, Pamela Anderson and Arca.
Scott, who is the founder of Brooklyn-based label Diotima and a former CFDA Award winner, was appointed after McCollough and Hernandez made their move to Loewe, taking over from Jonathan Anderson. A soft-launch Proenza Schouler presentation last September saw Scott interpret already-existing pieces created by the in-house design team; yesterday’s show marked her first full collection. 'Codes remain, but the perspective shifts, and we get closer to a new Proenza Schouler woman,’ read the collection notes.
‘It was really important for me to respect the legacy of Proenza Schouler, and that’s this really strong love of the New York woman,’ Scott elaborated backstage. ‘But I wanted to find a way to get closer to her, to have more complexity and texture – she can be erotic, she can be angry. Sometimes she’s not quite so perfect.’
It led to a collection of purposeful contradictions: Scott said that the idea of ‘self-authorship’ was important to her vision, the idea that a woman can choose what version of herself she wants to be on a given day. ‘She can be as perfect or as imperfect as she wants to be. I was thinking about this woman who is definitely punctual, but you know, maybe today she's a little late.’
In the collection, this was envisioned in pieces that suggested dressing in haste. A silk shift dress was purposely rumpled, its creases in-built by clever construction; skirts appeared twisted around the body, as if in the process of being pulled on, while button plackets were skewed at an angle or placed haphazardly. ‘There are things where they shouldn't be, collars, like lapels that are just not right, something's a little bit off,’ said Scott. ‘And she actually embraces that’
Strongest, though, were the moments when Scott evoked the expressive colour and texture she has honed at Diotima, which she founded in 2021 after a career in the design teams for Costume National, Elizabeth and James and Rachel Comey. Her debut runway show for Diotima last season (previously she had presented her collections via lookbook or presentation), channelled the subversive and liberatory spirit of carnival, from Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro and London’s Notting Hill to her native Caribbean (Scott will show her next collection for Diotima, which she continues to design and run alongside her role at Proenza Schouler, on Sunday 15 February).
At yesterday’s show, these vivid flourishes included dresses printed with orchids, which were taken from photographs before being hand-painted and printed (Scott liked the imperfections this process left), while other garments were studded with enormous metal eyelets or edged with twisted tassels (these also sprouted from clever footwear). Greens, blues and vibrant reds, meanwhile, played off the bright blue carpet which had been laid through the Lower East Side show space.
‘I really thought about the colour language that Jack and Lazaro had, what it did. And it was, you know, these colours that reverberate,’ she said. ‘They were very energetic. And so I took that and put my language into it.’
It was in these bolder moments that you got a glimpse of how Scott might evolve Proenza Schouler in the coming seasons. Because now that she seems to have figured out what the existing Proenza Schouler woman wants, Scott's next task is to bring a new group of women into the fold. One senses she’ll do that by embracing the intuitive, uninhibited design language she has developed over the past five years at Diotima – an instinctual approach which has seen her long touted as America’s next big thing.
